The Gin Game NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Despite its comic overtones, 'The Gin Game' presents a clarifying portrait of the loneliness that may come with age, and the difficulties of forging a relationship when our personalities have quite naturally become calcified by experience. As the moving performances of Mr. Jones and Ms. Tyson bear out, playing the hands we are dealt with equanimity is much easier when we are still sure that there will be many more hands to play."
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"D.L. Coburn’s play was a hit in 1976, but it’s thin as a needle, with a sharp point at the end on which its poignancy relies. Leonard Foglia’s revival lacks that sense of purpose in its shape. The age of the actors perhaps makes them slower and cuter than might be ideal; the result is likable but shambling. In gin, after all, having a king and queen in your hand is not enough to win; they need to be built into a sequence. That sense of order is not in these cards."
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"Whether Jones and Tyson are having memorization problems I cannot say, but the production is so lame and misguided (by the director Leonard Foglia) you would almost prefer that they suddenly started ad libbing selections from far better work each of them has done. As it is, they stick at least to the outlines of the script."
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"D.L. Coburn's two-hander is so slight it might almost evaporate as it's unfolding...What keeps the slender piece engaging is the delicate dance between Jones and Tyson...Foglia leans heavily on the humor, perhaps dimming some of the more emotionally affecting notes and making the shift into sobering home truths and self-recriminations somewhat abrupt. But there's no denying the crowdpleasing pleasure of watching these two masterful actors."
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"It’s true what they say about bona fide stars like Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones — they could indeed hold us spellbound simply by reading the New York telephone book. Not that 'The Gin Game' is as insubstantial as the contents of the phone book. But despite having won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, this two-hander really is a slip of a thing, elevated to dramatic art by captivating Broadway performances from two of the most enchanting actors you’d ever hope to see on the same stage."
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"Light on tragedy and heavy on comedy—at least in this version—it’s an infallible vehicle for two aging stars who can lay on the charm...Unfortunately, Leonard Foglia, the director, seems not to understand that there’s more to 'The Gin Game' than jokes...The results are hard to resist, but too soft-edged to bring true tears."
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"Under Leonard Foglia’s sensitive direction, the actors give their all to an almost-good play...Jones is more tentative here than usual, more halting in his speeches, more brittle than we expect Weller to be. Several exchanges faltered because of that, losing the snap necessary, and as a result, the play seemed even more schematic and predictable than I’d remembered. Still, there’s great pleasure in seeing these two masters duking it out over a card table. Call it a straight flush, if not quite a royal one."
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"Under Leonard Foglia’s direction, Tyson and Jones hit all the right notes of charming, amusing, ornery and scary. Along the way Jones and Tyson hold you, like the cards, in the palm of their hands."
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